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Dr. Robert F. Turner Ph.D.
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and has served as its Associate Director since then except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
A veteran of two Army tours in Vietnam, he served as a Research Associate and Public Affairs Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has also served in the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in the White House as Counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, at the State Department as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, and as the first President of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
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Major Hoi B. Tran
June 1953 - April 1975 - Vietnamese Air Force Officer
Graduated from United States Air Force - Air Training Command
Aircraft Mechanic
Flight Instructor - VNAF Air Training Center, Nha Trang
Fighter Pilot - Flight Leader 2nd Fighter Squadron, Nha Trang
Fighter Pilot - Flight Leader 83rd Special Air Group, Tan Son Nhat
Combat Group Commander - 74th Tactical Wing, Can Tho
Commander - Political Warfare Division - 33rd Tactical Wing, Tan Son Nhat
Airline Pilot - Air Vietnam - Dept. of Transportation-Republic of Vietnam
May 1975 - May 2003
Assistant Director - Demonstration Projects for Asian Americans - State of Washington
Director, Indochinese Service Center - Dept of Emergency Services - State of Washington
Natural Disaster Coordinator - Dept of Emergency Services - State of Washington
Area Manager - Desert Petroleum Inc - Head Office: Oxnard, California
Claims Specialist, Special Investigation Unit - California State Auto Assoc. San Jose, CA
Claims Supervisor, B.I Dept - Insurance Consulting Associates, Inc. Yorba Linda, CA
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Dr. Tôn Thát Thiên
Dr. Tôn Thát Thiên is a South Vietnamese nationalist who has been in the unique position of serving and working closely with three historic leaders of post-World War II Vietnam: President Ho Chi Minh in the Viet Minh during 1945-1946, Bao Dai 1954 and President Ngo Dinh Diem 1954-1959 & 1963.
From 1945 to 1975 Thiên was an active participant and a witness to almost all of the major historic events in Vietnam: the 1945 August Revolution, the establishment of the communist government of North Vietnam, the 1954 Geneva Conference, the division of Vietnam and the birth of the State of South Vietnam, the Geneva Conference on Laos in 1961 and 1962, the 1963 coup d'état against Ngo Dinh Diem, the 1968 Tet Offensive in Hué and the April 1975 Fall of Saigon.
He knew or met virtually all of the top leadership among the North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese and American political and military personnel, as well as most foreign journalists who covered the war.
In 1968 he served as Minister of Information in the South Vietnamese government. His reformist efforts allowing an uncensored media led to the Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in the same year.
Thién earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics at the London School of Economics and a Master's degree and Doctorate in Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
In 1975 Thiên left Vietnam for Paris. Eventually he emigrated to Canada where he worked as a professor of linguisitics at Universite de TroisRivières, Quêbec for the remainder of his active career. During his academic career he travelled extensively to academic conferences in Europe, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, the USSR, and Australia. He also served as a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and a senior visiting fellow at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
He passed away in 2014. See more at Wikipedia.
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Dr. Lewis Sorley Ph.D.
US Military Academy, BS. Univ Penn, MA. Penn State University, MPA. Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D. Graduate of the Naval Command & Staff Course and of the Army War College. Attended Harvard University’s Executive Program in National and International Security.
Vietnam Service: AUG-DEC 1966: Operations Plans Officer in Headquarters, I Field Force, Vietnam, in Nha Trang.
DEC 1966-AUG 1967: XO of 1st Tank Battalion, 69th Armor, operating in the Central Highlands vicinity of Pleiku.
Awarded Legion of Merit and 3 Air Medals, plus sharing in a Meritorious Unit Award (to I Field Force, Vietnam) and (from the South Vietnamese) a Cross of Gallantry with Palm (awarded to elements of the 25th Infantry Division, including the tank battalion in which he had served).
Assistant Secretary of the General Staff, Office of the Chief of Staff, '67-'70. CO, 2nd Tank Battalion, 37th Armor, Erlangen, Germany, ’71-’72.
Staff & Faculty, US Army War College, ’73-’75. Senior Military Assistant, Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, ’75-’76.
Lt. Col., retired. Central Intelligence Agency, ’76-’83. Author, ’83-present.
Retired Army, Retired CIA, semi-retired writer.
See more at Wikipedia.
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Roger Soiset
Degrees from The Citadel (B.A. in History in 1968) and California State University (the long Beach campus--M.A. in History in 1973).
Served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam with the 199th Lt. Inf. Brigade 1969-70. Highest rank, 1st Lt. (Infantry). Got the usual Vietnam service and campaign medals, three Bronze Stars (one was notable, for valor), an ARCOM and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
Currently a lecturer of history in the Social and International Studies Dept. at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, GA. At the school every semester I teach a class I constructed on the Vietnam Era (guest speakers have included several of the people involved in VVFH as well as Vietnamese refugees), and volunteer with the school's Military Task Force trying to help veteran students making the transition from soldier to scholar.
Outside the school, I have been a VFW member for about 20 years, and joined the Atlanta Vietnam Veteran Business Association about six years ago.
Two years ago I joined the Society of Military History.
I volunteer with the Atlanta History Center, notably doing interviews for the Library of Congress' Veterans' Oral History Project.
Books--or book, singular. In 1993 I self-published "The Two-Dollar Bill" (Palmetto Bookworks). It is a factual relation of my year with the 199th in Vietnam with all the names changed; and as you might surmise, I changed the unit to the 200th Brigade.